The Russian army bloggers haven’t been as fast because the Kiev regime and NATO allies to dismiss President Vladimir Putin’s peace phrases speech to the Overseas Ministry as propaganda. However they did.
In response to Boris Rozhin, the editor-in-chief of the Colonel Cassad army weblog, Putin’s speech on Friday morning, June 14, “was not introduced prematurely”. The Overseas Ministry viewers who assembled “realized about it half an hour prematurely, no extra.” There’s telltale vagueness within the Kremlin communiqué introducing “a gathering with the senior officers of the Russian Overseas Ministry.”
In sensible phrases, Moscow’s main impartial army analyst concluded, the speech was a tactical feint and a strategic deception.
“[Putin’s terms] will clearly not be accepted by the West and their Ukrainian puppets,” wrote Rozhin. “Towards the background of the ‘world summit’ [the Burgenstock, Switzerland, meeting on June 15-16] it will point out that in reality the West is prolonging the conflict, so these statements [of Putin] are one other torpedo within the summit. Russia is thus displaying the nations of the World South that it has provided a world that can be rejected by those that are broadcasting about ‘peaceable summits’…The conflict will proceed. The targets of the SVO [Special Military Operation] can be achieved by army means.”
The excellence within the final line is between Kremlin political technique and Normal Employees army technique – it is a distinction which printed Russian analyses of the president’s speech and the state propaganda organs keep away from figuring out. The semi-official Vzglyad quoted Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, as characterizing the response from the West as “of an unconstructive nature”. No Russian official will say as little as this for the file.
As an alternative, Vzglyad has mobilized its official sources to patch over the variations between Kremlin technique and Normal Employees technique by emphasizing that Putin is following the latter. “In response to [Putin], the West has acquired a selected situation – both Ukraine can be outdoors the NATO bloc, or there can be a daring and sharp onslaught that can go away no probability for the enemies. Putin is assured of victory not solely over Ukraine, but in addition over your entire collective West. The proposal was made with the intention to recall this initiative after the defeat of Ukraine. However Western leaders didn’t perceive Putin, after which they themselves will say that they need peace… However there can be no mercy, more durable circumstances can be put ahead.”
In a second report from lecturers on the Kremlin-financed Valdai Membership roster, Vzglyad claims “the essence of the Russian president’s speech is that the European safety system now not exists and won’t be primarily based on the identical rules.” “As well as, the Russian president managed to alter the agenda of the Swiss summit…the president’s initiative is able to remodeling the safety constructions not solely of Eurasia, but in addition within the perspective of your entire planet. As well as, Russia already has actually working worldwide establishments on this house: the CIS, SCO, EAEU, CSTO, BRICS, the Union State of Russia and Belarus. All these instruments have confirmed their reliability and suitability in fashionable circumstances.”
The Kremlin’s American camp followers have repeated the semi-official line by scratching the distinction between ways and technique, between feint and goal. “Discover he’s [Putin] not making a requirement about Odessa,” mentioned one. “So Odessa remains to be off the desk…So it is a prelude to the following ramp-up in Russian army operations.”
Russian skeptics, in addition to non-Russian army analysts, level out that Putin has repeatedly refused to comply with the Normal Employees’s recommendation, limiting their proposed army operations to an extent that there’s open questioning about his causes. One supply says Putin’s June 14 exposition is “solely half-right in blaming the Western ‘globalist liberal elites’ [Putin’s speech] for the present ‘extraordinarily harmful state of affairs’ [Putin’s speech]. Finally, the ideology of liberalism, inferiority advanced, and corruption which dominate the oligarch-backed elite in Moscow has performed a significant function.”
This can be a reference to the function Putin invited the oil and minerals oligarch Roman Abramovich to play within the negotiations of March-April 2022 in Istanbul; within the negotiations with the Ukrainian delegation, Abramovich was Putin’s private delegate and he outranked the official Russian negotiators. There was robust home army and political opposition to this on the time in Moscow; there stays suspicion of an try and repeat by Putin’s Kremlin workers, represented by Peskov, even now.
“He [Putin] can’t be so influenced nonetheless as to assume the conflict towards Russia through the Kiev regime will cease below the circumstances he laid out, nor can he assume there are any phrases which the US and NATO will be trusted by the Russians to signal. That’s why the Russian Overseas Ministry tabled the phrases of a non-aggression and safety in Europe requiring the roll-back of NATO’s borders to 1997. That was in December 2021. To assume anybody on the opposite aspect is reliable, or able to settlement, in any case Putin recounted of US aggression, mendacity, double-dealing, and Ukrainian Nazism, is unattainable.”
In Putin’s June 14 retelling of the Istanbul settlement, “all the pieces” — he mentioned of the paperwork initialed by Russian and Ukrainian negotiators — “was written on paper.” Then on March 30 [2022], Putin went on, after “the Russian troops have been withdrawn from Kiev, the Ukrainian management suspended its participation within the negotiations staging the notorious provocation in Bucha, and rejected the ready model of the agreements. I believe as we speak it’s clear why that ugly provocation was needed: to clarify why the outcomes that had been achieved in the course of the negotiations have been rejected. The trail to peace was rejected once more. As we all know now, it was completed on orders from Western curators, together with the previous UK Prime Minister who mentioned instantly throughout his go to to Kiev – no agreements; Russia have to be defeated on the battlefield to attain its strategic defeat.”
Supply: https://static01.nyt.com/
Be aware that the US newspaper report relies on phrases drafted between March 16 and 17, 2022, two weeks earlier than the draft paperwork have been initialed in Turkey. Subsequent reporting by the newspaper of the negotiations, which continued after the Istanbul conferences, concluded: “On April 15, 5 days after Mr. Abramovich advised the Ukrainians about his assembly with Mr. Putin, the Russian negotiators despatched a 17-page draft treaty to their president’s desk. Much like the month-earlier model, the April 15 draft contains textual content in purple highlighting points in dispute. However such markings are nearly completely absent from the treaty’s first pages, the place factors of settlement emerged.”
Actually, Putin had been unable to persuade Russian army and intelligence chiefs that the phrases he had approved for initialing could be enforceable and wouldn’t betray countrywide public assist of the introduced targets of the Particular Navy Operation.
Affirmation that Putin had been “micro-managing” the negotiations in Istanbul by way of Abramovich seems within the New York Occasions report of the method from Ukrainian and different sources. “ ‘Colleagues, I spoke to RA,’ Ukraine’s lead negotiator, Davyd Arakhamia, wrote on April 10 [2022] in a WhatsApp message to the Ukrainian staff. ‘He spoke yesterday for an hour and a half together with his boss.’ RA was Roman Abramovich, the Russian billionaire who performed a behind-the-scenes function within the talks. His ‘boss,’ Mr. Putin, was urging the negotiators to focus on the important thing points and work by way of them rapidly, Mr. Arakhamia wrote. (A member of the WhatsApp group confirmed that message and others to reporters for The Occasions.).”
Within the New York Occasions model, primarily based on a March 17 draft of phrases, no Russian supply acknowledges the backlash Putin confronted from the Normal Employees and the Safety Council after the total extent of Abramovich’s function turned clear from the phrases Putin had advised his negotiators to sign up Istanbul. After two weeks of inner debate, Putin was pressured to again down, and the phrases he and Abramovich had conceded on March 31 have been revised. The Ukrainian sources feeding the New York Occasions reporters advised them “we had little interest in persevering with the talks.”
What’s lacking from this Ukrainian and American narrative, in addition to from the general public Russian variations, is that Putin retreated from the phrases he had agreed with Abramovich. The function performed by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson within the printed narrative, repeated to the press by Israelis and others, had been a minor one.
Final Friday, Putin hinted that the Normal Employees has opposed his concession phrases. “I haven’t spoken about this publicly both however a few of these current right here learn about it. After the Russian military seized a part of the Kherson and Zaporozhye areas, many Western politicians provided their mediation in a peaceable settlement of the battle. Considered one of them was on a working go to to Moscow on March 5, 2022. We accepted his mediation efforts, particularly since he mentioned in the course of the dialog that he had secured the assist of the leaders of Germany and France, in addition to high-ranking US representatives.”
“In course of our dialog our overseas visitor questioned – an attention-grabbing second – saying in case you are helping Donbass, then why Russian troops are within the south of Ukraine, together with within the Kherson and Zaporozhye areas? We responded to the impact that it was our Normal Employees ‘s determination [sic] on planning the operation. And I’ll add as we speak that the concept was to bypass some fortified areas in-built Donbass over the eight years by Ukrainian authorities, primarily for liberating Mariupol.”
“Then our overseas colleague specified – knowledgeable man, to be truthful to him: are Russian troops going to remain within the Kherson and Zaporozhye areas? And what is going to occur to those areas after the Particular Navy Operation has attained its targets? I answered to this that normally I don’t rule out preservation of the Ukrainian sovereignty over these territories, offered Russia has a steady land bridge to Crimea.”
It had been clear to the president then, and it’s clearer now, that Putin’s “steady land bridge to Crimea” was politically incompatible with “Ukrainian sovereignty” as a result of, because the Normal Employees stored repeating to Putin, it was militarily unattainable.
On Friday Putin stored the id of the mediator secret. However it’s already well-known from the mediator himself. It was the Israeli, former prime minister Naftali Bennett (proper). He has confirmed his assembly in Moscow with Putin on March 5, 2022. For Putin to authorize Abramovich and Bennett, two Jewish Israelis, to barter Russia’s end-of-war phrases with the Kiev regime stays a extremely delicate subject in Moscow.
Russian public opinion has been clearer on the end-of-war goals and on phrases of negotiations than Putin has admitted himself to have been. For the ballot proof, click on to learn.
Supply: https://johnhelmer.internet/
What now, what subsequent?
In response to the President on Friday, “a verbatim return to the safety proposals that we put ahead twenty-five, fifteen, and even two years in the past is unattainable, as an excessive amount of has occurred and the circumstances have modified. Nonetheless, the fundamental rules and, most significantly, the very topic of dialogue stay unchanged.” From Putin’s new assertion of end-of-war phrases, he says the “parameters have been broadly agreed upon in the course of the Istanbul negotiations in 2022, together with particular particulars on demilitarisation such because the agreed numbers of tanks and different army tools. We reached consensus on all factors.”
Now, nevertheless, with the brand new long-range artillery, drones, missiles, and F-16s provided by NATO to the Kiev regime, the depth of “demilitarisation” is greater than ten occasions past the “25 mile” (40 kiliometre) vary which was one of many Russian parameters within the Istanbul settlement drafts of March 2022. Learn the backfile on what Putin has been calling this “sanitary zone”.
Denazification, the second strategic aim of the Particular Navy Operation, means regime change in Kiev, however Putin implied final Friday that he means not more than the substitute of Vladimir Zelensky as a result of “the presidential time period of the beforehand elected head of Ukraine has expired alongside together with his legitimacy, which can’t be reinstated by any tips”. That, he added, leaves just one constitutional authority within the nation: “not like the manager department, the Verkhovnaya Rada is a reliable physique now. Ukraine will not be a presidential republic, however a parliamentary and presidential republic. That is the purpose.”
Russian sources imagine that is inappropriate. As Rozhin has written, “the targets of the SVO can be achieved by army means.”
Requested to checklist what they imagine will now be the army targets within the Normal Employees’s technique, the emphasis, the sources say, will proceed to be power era vegetation and distribution hubs and networks, particularly these by way of which the substitute electrical energy is coming into the Ukraine from its neighbours – the Chervonograd substation (from Poland); the Mukacheve substation (Slovakia, Hungary, Romania); the Usatove and Primorska substations (Moldova, Romania); and the Khmelnitsky, Dobrotvirka and Pivendennoukrainska producing hubs.
GERMAN MAP OF THE UKRAINE’S ELECTRICITY IMPORT LINES AS OF OCTOBER 2021
Supply: https://www.swp-berlin.org/
UKRAINIAN MAP OF THE IMPORT LINE CAPACITIES AS OF OCTOBER 2023
Supply: https://kyivindependent.com/
The entire capability of those electrical energy traces is proven as slightly below 3,890 kV. On June 10, the Ukrainian state utility Ukrenergo reported that “nearly 25,000 MWh of electrical energy have been imported into the nation from Romania, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, and Moldova in the course of the day”. A NATO army engineer estimates that though Russian raids have pressured among the traces into what’s reported publicly as upkeep, the import quantity remains to be working “at or close to capability. However they’re struggling. Look ahead to renewed assaults on the substations connecting the Ukrainian grid to Poland and Romania.” For extra technical particulars on the state of affairs from US engineers, learn the feedback right here.
“If these are knocked out,” a NATO army engineer says, “it’s throughout.”
Within the meantime, in line with this Spanish newspaper report, the billed cost for electrical energy is rising so quick and so excessive, at the least 1 / 4 of the Ukrainian inhabitants can not afford it. “The electrical energy tariff from June has elevated by 64%, from 2.64 hryvnas per kilowatt-hour (kWh) to 4.32 hryvnas (between $0.064 and $0.11). Days earlier than the Ukrainian Cupboard met on Might 30, it was leaked that the rise could be 80%. However the response within the media and on social networks made it clear that the measure was extremely unpopular at a time when the authorities should additionally cope with huge unease over the obligatory conscription course of to include tons of of hundreds of civilians into the military.”
“Dixi informs this newspaper that its estimates in 2023 indicated the typical month-to-month consumption per family in Ukraine was 155Kwh. On this common state of affairs, the month-to-month family invoice would rise from $10 to $16.6. The Ukrainian Statistics Service signifies that the typical month-to-month wage in Ukraine was equal to $471 on the finish of final yr. The World Financial institution estimated that in 2022 alone, the yr during which Russia launched its invasion, the poverty price in Ukraine rose from 5.5% to 24% of the inhabitants. There is no such thing as a different to elevating tariffs, say the federal government and firms within the sector.”
Which means that the multi-billion greenback money transfers to the Kiev regime from the US and European Union for non-military price range assist are being diverted, and failing to succeed in the inhabitants.
To run emergency producing units powered by diesel and to gas the Ukrainian army actions require gas storages. The Russian Protection Ministry’s every day operations bulletin is reporting every day strikes at these all through the nation.
On the border there are a sequence of targets which Russian sources anticipate to be hit within the coming days. The lead picture map exhibits their areas and capabilities (purple for rail, orange for highway, blue for bridge and ferry). Rozhin has reprinted this evaluation of those targets. “Since sending army support by air will not be out there, many of the cargo is delivered by rail, heavy vehicles, or, way more dangerous, by sea. Both means, all cargoes undergo customs and checkpoints. Within the west and south-west of Ukraine there are about 87 sea, pedestrian, rail, and highway border crossings…Making an allowance for the checkpoints that Ukraine acquired from the USSR, this quantity will be elevated by nearly half, however a major a part of such crossings is both destroyed, looted in earlier many years, or deserted below the USSR. Nonetheless, many of the border crossings are on the border with Moldova. There are 34 of them, however they don’t seem to be used as intensively because the checkpoints for transit to and from the territory of NATO nations. The state of a few of them is much from ideally suited.”
Rozhin’s goal in mapping the targets is to ask the query publicly: “If all border crossings are recognized, why not intercept army cargo there?”
“Within the west and south-west, Ukraine borders Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Moldova. The entire size of the border in these areas is 777 km. The long-range weapons of the Russian Federation — for instance, X-101 missiles with cluster and high-explosive warheads — are adequate to destroy army cargo instantly on the border. All of the coordinates of the border crossings are nearly actually recognized to the Russian army. However the primary drawback within the matter of the destruction of army cargo at these factors is reconnaissance and acquiring dependable information on the time of shipments of cargo columns. The figuring out parameter on this case is the exact time for the crossing of the cargo on to the territory of Ukraine.” The unique army weblog supply will be adopted right here.
In related trend, Rozhin and different army bloggers are asking publicly why there are Kremlin restrictions on targets which the US, NATO and the Ukrainians are utilizing for drone and missile assaults on Crimea, in addition to deeper into the Russian heartland. Putin addressed this query in his press convention with worldwide reporters on June 5.
“What can the Ukrainian army – not those who’re simply sitting there and urgent buttons – however the higher-ranking ones do in terms of goal task? They will determine a goal that may be a precedence for them. However they don’t seem to be those who determine whether or not a specific goal needs to be hit, as a result of, to reiterate, a WTA (weapon goal task) is fashioned and successfully entered solely by those that provide the weapons. If we’re speaking about ATACMS, then the Pentagon is doing it. Whether it is Storm Shadow, then the British are. It’s much more easy within the case of Storm Shadow, as a result of the goal task is entered routinely, with out the involvement of the army personnel on the bottom. The British do it, that’s all there’s to it.”
“And when the Bundeswehr army have been pondering an assault on the Crimean Bridge or different targets, they have been pondering for themselves. Nobody was doing it for them, proper? They have been going to do it. The identical goes for the French specialists. Western specialists do it. We’ve got no illusions about this. How are we supposed to reply?”
“First, we’ll, in fact, enhance our air defence techniques. We can be destroying their missiles. Second, we imagine that if somebody is pondering that it’s attainable to produce such weapons to a conflict zone with the intention to ship strikes at our territory and to create issues for us, why can we not provide our weapons of the identical class to these areas all over the world the place they’ll goal delicate amenities of the nations which are doing this to Russia? The response might be symmetrical. We are going to give it a thought.”
“Third, certain sufficient, such actions will wreck worldwide relations, which have already hit all-time low, and undermine worldwide safety. Finally, if we see that these nations are being embroiled right into a conflict towards us, and this constitutes their direct involvement within the conflict towards the Russian Federation, we reserve the correct to reply in form. Usually talking, this path might result in critical issues. I believe that covers all of it. If in case you have any main questions, please go forward. However I don’t assume I can add something to what I simply mentioned.”
A number of days later, after a contemporary sequence of missile assaults on Crimea was launched, the Russian army bloggers responded with this main query – why are the US, French and British techniques working within the Black Sea not focused when their function within the Russian assaults is definite?
Mikhail Zvinchuk, principal of the Rybar army weblog, has reported that on the eve of the June 10-11 missile assaults on the Peninsula, “it’s price noting that… NATO satellites have been once more lively. The goal reconnaissance alternately relied on which areas have been deliberate [for missile attack] — on June 8-9, the northwestern a part of the Crimea was filmed, and on June 10 and 11, Sevastopol and the centre of the Peninsula. As well as, yesterday and the day earlier than yesterday, particular consideration of the satellites was paid to the japanese a part of the Crimea. Filming was carried out of Theodossia, Kirovsky, Kerch, and naturally, the Crimean Bridge… Additionally, throughout as we speak’s assault [June 12] within the western a part of the Black Sea, the American RQ-4B drone was working…After the strikes, it moved to the japanese a part of the ocean space nearer to the Crimean Bridge, the place, unhindered, it was working till the morning. This reality, along with the lively work of the satellites, in addition to consecutive strikes on the air defence positions, first within the northwest, then within the south, enable us to conclude that the following aim often is the east of the Peninsula.”
ITALIAN MAP OF US AIR FORCE DRONE OPERATIONS AGAINST CRIMEAN TARGETS
Supply: https://www.itamilradar.com/— the map signifies the monitoring paths of the RQ-4B on Might 29. This Italian supply often maps and reviews on US and NATO operations within the Black Sea area, normally with a time lag of a number of days.
In parallel, in line with the Rybar report, there appeared “for the primary time in a month and a half, south of Feodosia, the French long-range radar detection plane, the E-3F, and the French Navy plane [Bréguet] Atlantique 2 [based at Souday Bay, Crete]. Within the west of the ocean additionally flew the RC-135V of the British Air Power. That could be a lot for in the future, isn’t it? As famous repeatedly, the primary aim of the West is the Crimean Bridge, and for this it’s needed to cut back the fight potential of the air defence within the Crimea.”
The Russian Air Power has downed a USAF drone working towards the Crimea in March 2023. Since final October the Houthis, assisted by Iran and probably by Russia, have downed a number of USAF drones working within the Crimson Sea to help Anglo-American assaults on targets in Yemen.
What the army bloggers like Rozhin and Zvinchuk are saying is why not strike at these targets now?
“What now we have in the long run,” Zvinchuk has written on June 12, is that “the air defence strikes are aimed toward weakening the safety close to the Crimean Bridge, which have to be taken into consideration and measures taken to change the out there technique of missile defence – the missiles are shot down, however not all of them. The enemy is clearly making ready for a brand new assault. We’ve already recognized two false begins – they are often referred to as the harbinger of huge strikes; it’s attainable they are going to be aimed on the bridge. Sooner or later, the dearth of opposition, the reluctance to just accept actuality and be taught from errors can have an effect on the potential of the air defence of the Crimea. Already it will play a key function when the F-16 fighters will make their look.”
“Reluctance to just accept actuality and be taught from errors” – this criticism is aimed, not on the Normal Employees, however on the Kremlin.
MAP OF UKRAINE MISSILE STRIKES AT CRIMEA, JUNE 10-12
Map of Ukrainian missile strikes on Crimea, June 10-12 – posted by Rybar, June 12 at 20:29h.
On June 14 Zvinchuk returned to the focusing on of the USAF drones. “For the primary time, the American Triton [MQ-4C] appeared on the Crimean shores proper earlier than a massed blow on the Crimea. The query of what you possibly can anticipate from its presence within the Black Sea area begs itself. Particularly when the curators of the Ukrainian army is not going to miss such a possibility to assault. And if this occurs, it is going to once more be attainable to lift the query of the advisability of a extra radical counteraction to American aviation close to the Russian borders. Sometime, perhaps, we’ll come to the identical measures because the Houthis.”
